Don’t Get Blocked for Being Too Social on Facebook!
Posted by Nick O'Neill on September 4th, 2008 11:15 AM
Hey you! Don’t let me catch you adding too many friends or messaging too many users or you’ll wind up getting blocked! You may have seen it yourself, a warning dialog box which pops up and alerts you that your activity is of a rate similar to someone that is abusing the system (a spammer). Every day I receive emails from people that have been banned and they can’t get access to the site and receive no response from Facebook.
How Does Facebook Know You’re a Spammer?
Facebook uses a proprietary algorithm for determining unusual usage. The system automatically disables accounts whereas the reinstatement process is manual. Facebook states that “the speed at which you are acting and the sheer number of actions you have made are both taken into account.” After a little bit of analysis it’s pretty easy to determine what methods are used for determining spam.
Here’s the factors that we’ve determined Facebook uses to block users:
- Number of friends - Do you have 20 friends or 1,000 friends? This is important because the more friends you have on Facebook, the more active you probably are on the site. As such, don’t think you’ll be able to blast out messages or wall posts to 300 people when you are friends with 50.
- Content Similarity - If you are browsing through the site and writing the exact same wall post on everybody’s wall, there’s a good chance that Facebook considers this spam activity. Get creative and switch up the content you are creating. Otherwise let’s be honest, you are acting like a spammer … right?
- Average Message Usage - How active is your Facebook inbox? If you receive 40 messages a day, you shouldn’t be punished for replying to them. [We assume that] Facebook calculates an average message usage for each user. If you fall outside a certain statistical deviation from your normal usage, you will be warned and possibly banned.
- Time - A sudden surge in usage will set off Facebook’s alarms. If you haven’t sent a message in days but suddenly send out 50, you will look like a spammer.
- Facebook Activity Factor - All of these factors (and others that we don’t know of) are used to generate an overall Facebook activity factor for each user. When your overall activity falls outside the statistical norm for you, you will receive a warning. If your usage doesn’t drop to fall within your normal usage levels within a specific time frame, you will be banned.
How to Avoid Being Blocked by Facebook
So now that you know what will get you blocked by Facebook you should pretty much know how to avoid being blocked. Don’t send too many messages, don’t post too many wall posts, don’t go adding friends at a ridiculous rate. Is this model fair? Well that’s really open to philosophical debate but Facebook has to battle spam and the easiest way to play nicely is to stay under the spam radar.
Facebook’s Internal Spam Conflict
As Kim Hart wrote in the Washington Post today, Facebook has an internal spam conflict. Facebook wants to ensure that users don’t get attacked by actual spammers. In the past year the volume of spam on social networks has increased. Both Facebook and MySpace have turned to lawsuits to try to end some of the largest spamming attacks. While Facebook wants to protect users’ right to communicate, they also want to ensure that spam doesn’t drive users away from the site.
Facebook has leveraged a model in which automated algorithms try to determine which users are spammers and ban them from the system. Unfortunately this model hasn’t completely worked as some spammers have found security holed and has leveraged those to spam users from accounts not owned by the spammer.
The bottom line is that Facebook continues their battle against spam. Just as luxury goods stores battle thieves, social networks must continuously allocate resources to battle spam. It has simply become part of the overhead in the social network business.
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October 6th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
i totally agree with this post!!!
i was fired and my account deleted with all the contacts only for send 10-20 messages…
October 16th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
i 've been blocked
but i dont know good way to add friends
so..
i'm sorry
what i've 2 do to be back and be normal user ,,,,,,
October 17th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
This is an excellent article!
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“Content Similarity - If you are browsing through the site and writing the exact same wall post on everybody’s wall, there’s a good chance that Facebook considers this spam activity. Get creative and switch up the content you are creating. Otherwise let’s be honest, you are acting like a spammer … right?”
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Thank you Nick for posting this info!
Many people who do not understand that SPAM is much more
subtle and sophisticated than merely receiving too many unwanted emails.
Especially someone like myself, over 40, who would NEVER possibly KNOW that posting an - excellent quality, appropriate to context, “Content Similarity” non - commercial, information only link, to as few as 5 of my favorite groups, would fall under the heading of SPAM. This is an absolutely shocking discovery. And one that caused me to be blocked for 3 days from posting to Facebook. It was horrifying and demoralizing to learn this ..after the fact.
My confidence in my many happy months of consistently excellent Facebook manners, disciplined correspondences, great friendship interactions, and common sense good behavior has been utterly shaken.
I'm now immersing myself in all things Facebook, before morving forward.
Since I highly value my excellent online etiquette the was I value my own good
reputation in general, this has been an experience I'm learning from and arming myself
with all the necessary knowledge to make sure it never happens again.
It's a horrilbe experience to be missing a vital piece of data, incure the blocking penalty for such
a minor infraction, and not know WHAT caused the infraction to occur.
It took me two days of frantic reading to learn what happened in the first place.
I politely contacted Facebook and shared my experience with them. And also thanked them
when I was unblocked, although I received no replies in return. It was a matter of princple that
I detailed my actions and experience with Facebook help, and later thanked them for the un-block. I wanted Facebook to know who I am and that I'm a responsible Facebook-er.
The link you provided to Kim Hart's article is excellent.
Inside Kim's Washington Post article is another article that is VITAL reading.
Here it is.
Thor Muller wrote - “13 Reasons Your Facebook Account Will Be Disabled” on GetSatisfaction.com
It's well worth printing out whether you are new or assume you are well behaved and
“experienced” with Facebook rules and regs.
Take care all,
October 17th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Hello again folks,
Here is the link to Thor Muller's article,
“13 Reasons Your Facebook Account Will Be Disabled”
http://getsatisfaction.com/facebook/topics/13_r...
Facebook is an excellent social utility.
And I simply plan to master their rules
and stay ontop of the latest news.
Thanks again Nick for your article.
October 30th, 2008 at 9:38 am
I understand the logic behind establishing rules and algorithms to block spammers, but shouldn’t the algorithm recognize the fact that I share similarities with all the users I request a relationship with? (i.e. same high school, same graduating class, same college, etc…).
For the past year or two, I have rarely used Facebook and had less than 50 friends. I logged in a few days ago and found that I had a bunch of friend requests, most of which were high school friends that I have not seen in over 10 years. Once I added everyone, I found that most of my graduating class were all users of Facebook. Knowing that I’m still in contact with most of them, I started to ‘add friends’ who I know well enough to call a ‘friend’. After I tried to add about 60 friends, Facebook shut me down.
Even more disturbing, most, if not all accepted my invite. I’m still blocked from adding friends - it’s been about 28 hours.